NCJ Number
220380
Journal
Legal and Criminological Psychology Volume: 12 Issue: Part 2 Dated: September 2007 Pages: 297-309
Date Published
September 2007
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This study examined the effects and possible interaction of motivation and feedback on the accuracy of credibility judgments of videotaped liars and truth-tellers.
Abstract
Despite the large body of research on deception detection, few studies have addressed the impact of two factors that seem to have major relevance to credibility assessment, motivation and feedback. An interesting finding was a motivation impairment effect such that high motivation in observers lowered their accuracy relative to their less motivated counterparts, corroborating an earlier finding. It is believed that the results are relevant to understanding the “investigator bias” effects which were observed in previous studies. The results of this study suggest that it is important for lie-catchers to monitor their motivation level to ensure that over-enthusiasm is not clouding their judgments. It is recommended that professionals regularly discuss their judgments with colleagues as a form of feedback to reevaluate their own decisionmaking strategies. In order to effect a positive change in forensic settings, researchers looking to develop empirically based training to improve credibility assessments need to consider motivation and feedback. Although most people perform around the level of chance in making credibility judgments, some researchers have hypothesized that high motivation and the provision of accurate feedback could lead to a higher accuracy rate. This study consisting of 151 participants examined the influence of these factors on judgment accuracy and whether any improvement following feedback was related to social facilitation or a reevaluation of “tunnel vision” decisionmaking. Figures, references